The constellation Virgo is home to the Virgo galaxy cluster, the largest in our vicinity (if you count millions of lightyears as vicinity). The image above are individual crops from an image taken with a 60mm refractor telescope.

The Moon 2019-05-10, the bright side is stacked from 24 exposures of 1/20s, the dark side is a single 20s exposure. Processed with PIPP, Autostakkert, Photoshop and Lightroom.

I used the 127mm f/8 refractor together with a Nikon TC20EIII teleconverter on the Nikon D750, resulting in a focal length of about 2m. The picture is a combination of 24 exposures of 1/20s. First I aligned the pictures using PIPP to be able to stack them in AutoStakkert 3. Sharpening was done in Registax 6. In Photoshop I followed Dylan O’Donnell’s process for HDR moon images by combining the stack with a single 20s exposure using a layer mask in Photoshop, some final touches were added in Lightroom.

Even after more than two hours of exposure the image of the reflection nebula M78 and it’s surroundings is quite grainy. This object needs much more exposure. When pushing the raw files to bring out the faint nebulosity the background becomes a bit streaky, therefore I kept the image quite dark.

Comet C/2018 Y1 Iwamoto, Takahashi FS-60CB, Tak Multi-Flattener, Nikon D750, 176x15s (44 Min.), ISO3200, combination of two stacks of images, one registered on the stars, the other on the comet.Read More →

After a long spell of clouds, snow and rain, clear skies have returned. Apart from the streak artefacts in the background I like this image a lot, this is my first properly focused image with the Baader h-alpha filter.

When my wife noticed the beautiful thin crescent moon in a gap in the clouds I rushed to the deck on our roof, to take a picture of the conjunction of the Moon and Jupiter. At first I went bare-footed, but after a few seconds I couldn’t stand the snow under my bare soles, and put on some slippers. But I was still only wearing my sleeping attire, boxer shorts and a worn-out T-shirt. Temperature was -5°C.